The WD My Passport 500GB portable SSD has matched its lowest price at $80

Passport 500gb
Passport 500gb

Ever just wanted to have your music or games or software with you and didn't trust that old portable hard drive to survive the trip? Get a portable SSD instead because it's not only faster, it'll survive being tossed around while you keep moving. The WD My Passport 500GB external USB-C portable solid state drive has dropped in price today. It's down to $79.99 at Amazon, which is a price match of Best Buy's deal of the day that features the same great deal. The last deal we shared on this SSD was when it dropped to $85, so the price is only getting better. It will disappear though, and the SSD can jump as high as $130 when it's not on sale.

This isn't just an SSD. It also has NVMe technology. If you know about internal SSDs, you know there's a significant difference between an SSD with NVMe and without. Without NVMe, SSDs basically aren't much faster than regular hard drives. They are still more reliable and don't damage as quickly, but you don't really see a difference when it comes to loading times and things like that. NVMe, however, changed the game.

The My Passport has read and write speeds up to 1,050 MB/s and 1,000 MB/s respectively. Compare that to a portable SSD that doesn't have NVMe like the Samsung T5 where the speeds top out at 540 MB/s. You're getting twice the speed with this drive, and it's not even as expensive as the Samsung one.

You can also protect your data with this drive. For one thing, it has built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption. That ensures no one gets to your data unless you want them to. The device itself is also highly resistant to shocks and vibrations. You can carry it with you, throw it in your backpack, let it bounce around in the backseat of your cat without fear of the drive getting corrupted.

While it primarily connects via USB-C, the drive is also compatible with USB-A 3.2 Gen 2. WD is so confident in this drive's performance that it's backed up by a five-year warranty.

John Levite
J.D. Levite has been in the deals game since 2012. He has posted daily deals at Gizmodo, The Wirecutter, The Sweethome, and now for Thrifter. He was there for the first Prime Day and has braved the full force of Black Friday. If you cut him, he bleeds savings. But don't try it for real. That's a metaphor.